How to develop Good Taste - The Most Important Ability of the Web Entrepreneur

When Bill Gates was asked in the D5 conference what made Steve Jobs such a successful and influential entrepreneur, Gates said “Steve gave a speech once, which is one of my favorites, where he talked about, in a certain sense, we build the products that we want to use ourselves. And so he’s really pursued that with incredible taste and elegance that has had a huge impact on the industry.”

To succeed with your web venture you must produce quality results on all fronts. Apart from having a good idea for a product that delivers real benefits to your users, you need to produce easy to use software that’s also easy on the eye. If your website design isn’t good enough to build trust then visitors to your website will never even try your product. Your sales copy has to be compelling, otherwise visitors will get bored and your visitor to customer conversion rate will plummet.

These are just a small fraction of the things you must do well in order to succeed. Since no one (including you) is an expert on all things, you will need to cooperate with others to produce all the different aspects of your start-up.

And here is the best advice I can give you as a web entrepreneur. While you can’t be an expert in every field, you must learn to recognise quality in all these fields. In short - Have good taste. This simple ability will help you define your goals, hire the right employees and freelancers and reject shabby work.

So how can I develop a good taste?, you ask. The answer is - learn and don’t be afraid to be critical. For instance, to develop a good taste in graphic design, you need to start reading design blogs. When you find a well designed site, study it. Examine logos, colours, fonts. Compare your site with others. what makes your site less compelling? less elegant?. If you develop a real interest in web design and an opinion about what constitutes good design, then your website and application will have quality design.

This technique works in every field, from programming to design, from copywriting to SEO. So don’t wait, go and develop a good taste, who knows you might eventually create the iPod of web apps.

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Announcing PostWisdom for FireFox: Your Personal Blog Writing Coach

Imagine reading an article about blogging from your favorite blogging guru. After a couple of sentences you become excited. The article is really good. It contains an amazing technique. A technique that will make you a better blogger. Using this technique, you immediatly whip out a shining blog post.

When it’s time to write another post you use the technique again, and again the results are great. But since you don’t want to be monotonous/boring, you avoid using that technique for a couple of weeks. And then a new really good article captures your attention and the old technique is forgotten.

I’ve been suffering from the “using only the latest writing advice” syndrom for quite a while now. And that is why we developed PostWisdom. PostWisdom is a FireFox Plugin intended to help bloggers remember and use the best writing techniques. It is easy to use and free.

You can download it and read about it here.

I am looking forward to hear what you think about it, so please, leave a comment.

Update: It seems there was a problem with the download link. My apologies. It’s working now. Thank you Dan for the heads up.

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What was so valuable “Best Buy” completely changed its corporate culture to get?

A Corporate Blogging Case Study

A 35% increase in productivity!!!

According to CNN Money (via Kodus), Best Buy currently lets 60% of its HQ employees come and go whenever they please as long as they achieve their goals. This is a huge cultural change, but it seems that Best Buy is happy with this change since they plan to expand it to their entire HQ staff and their stores.

But how does it relate to corporate blogging, you ask?

How to “Sell” Corporate Blogging

The Best Buy case shows that a company can change its culture if the benefits are big enough. A company doesn’t need to completely change its corporate culture to gain the benefits of blogging. It only needs to find some way to acknowledge and reward behind-the-firewall bloggers for their efforts. We (Enterprise 2.0 experts/evangelists/advocates) can use the benefits that blogging and other Enterprise 2.0 technologies bring to “Sell” the required cultural change to the company.

The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 and Corporate Blogging

This is where we (so called experts/evangelists/advocates) fail miserably. Once we are faced with the simple and mandatory question that comes before every project - What are the clear benefits this project will bring? we start to babble.

The truth is - we don’t have good answer. We can show wonderful things blogging has done for individuals on the Internet. Some companies have even successfully used blogs to create a relationship with their customers. But there is no solid collection of benefits for corporate (behind-the-firewall) blogging.

If you know of such an example, where an internal blog provided real benefits, I’d love to hear about it. And though the Enterprise 2.0/Corporate Blogging gurus probably won’t admit to it, they’ll probably be very happy to hear about it as well.

3 Simple and Powerful Techniques Management Can Use to Encourage Enterprise Blogging

Web 2.0 technologies are surprisingly slow in penetrating businesses. It is becoming clear that knowledge sharing (blogging for example) can be effectively introduced within a company only with the active support of management.

Management needs to do the right things–primarily because management has limited time. Wasting management’s time on low-yielding activities will cause them to lose interest. Doing the wrong things can also harm the goal of knowledge sharing. To use the words of the renowned business author, Peter Drucker, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

The following are practical, down-to-earth techniques that management can use to promote enterprise blogging:

Comment on employees’ blogs. Imagine the reaction of a lowly copywriter when the VP of marketing writes “I love this idea; keep working on it” in the blog’s comments. The excitement will keep him ferociously blogging about new ideas for at least a couple of months.
Comment on comments. The dialogue in the comments section of a blog helps refine ideas, create new ones, and disseminate knowledge. By participating in that dialogue, management endorses the process. Management should be careful not to promote its own ideas, because their ideas have much more weight and will dominate the conversation.
Keep a link blog. Linking to an employee blogger will accomplish the same goals as leaving comments on his blog (i.e., show support and recognition). A link blog is even more effective than commenting because the acknowledgement of the blogger is public. Keeping a link blog will help spread information throughout the company (since senior management’s blogs will be widely read). It will also help employees understand what interests the senior management (help guide the corporate blogging conversation).

Management can use these techniques to actively promote and show support for enterprise blogging–and in so doing, lead the company toward knowledge sharing.

Making Effective Enterprise Blogging Evolve

Evolution is one of the most powerful phenomena known to man. Through evolution (adapting to their environment), single-celled organisms have turned into birds (flyers), fish (swimmers), and human beings (thinkers!).

The cheapest, quickest, and easiest way for a company to promote blogging and other knowledge-sharing practices is to transform itself into an environment that induces an evolutionary process of knowledge sharing.

Now let’s see what an environment that induces evolution is.

Evolution rewards small changes

The single-celled organism didn’t just wake up one morning as a bird. It began by dividing into two cells.

Multicellular organisms proved to be better adapted to certain environments than single-celled ones. Multicellular organisms, therefore, got a better chance to evolve.

Similarly, an employee won’t become a master blogger overnight.

To create effective employee bloggers (information sharers), a company should notice every small step an employee makes toward knowledge sharing. The company should reward the employee while taking into account all those steps. If an employee starts blogging, notice it. If he blogs a lot, notice it. If he blogs on subjects that are important to the company, notice it. If a lot of other employees read his blog, notice it. If he helps spread ideas created by other employees, notice it.

But noticing isn’t enough. The company must let the employee know that his actions have been noticed. It must reward him. Without feedback and reward, there is no evolution.

Evolution handsomely rewards ‘good changes’

Not all changes are of equal value. The prehistoric bird that developed wings that were strong enough to propel it through the air was much better rewarded than the bird that grew a fourth toe on its feet. The benefits that birds got from flying were powerful enough to make flying birds dominate the class. Eventually we were left mostly with flying birds.

Similarly, when an enterprise blogger comes up with great ideas, finds a way to make or save the company money, or acts as a channel to spread knowledge throughout the company, he should be handsomely rewarded.

Handsomely rewarding effective bloggers will greatly speed up the evolution of effective blogging and knowledge sharing in the enterprise.

The problem with the evolutionary approach

The biggest problem with using an evolutionary approach to induce effective enterprise blogging is defining the reward structure. If the company counts and rewards the wrong things, strange and unexpected blogging behavior will occur. For instance, if the company puts too much weight on the number of posts a blogger writes, bloggers will blog a lot about unimportant (and potentially distracting) matters.

Rewarding the right actions, setting the correct reward for each action, and determining when and how to reward corporate bloggers are crucial to creating the right environment in which knowledge sharing will emerge.

If creating the reward structure is so tough, then why do it?

Why you should use the evolutionary approach

When the reward structure is exactly right, effective enterprise blogging and information sharing will emerge quickly, and with amazing results.

This is the third article in the Enterprise 2.0 series.

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Wiki adoption in the enterprise

It seems that adoption is the biggest problem of Enterprise 2.0 applications. Jerry Bowles, an Enterprise Irregular, writes about the difficulties in getting employees to use wikis.

As I already wrote, I believe it boils down to this:

Enterprise 2.0 apps like blogs and wikis make people give the company something that was previously their own - their knowledge, expertise and ideas (by forcing the employees to document them). It is only natural that they resist.

For this to be a fair deal, the company needs to give something in return. More specifically - Pay.

How to ignite behind-the-firewall blogging

Is it possible to take the most powerful and productive force on the Internet today and apply it to the enterprise?

Can behind-the-firewall blogging be as effective as the Blogosphere?

Knowledge sharing and collaboration can create amazing results in the enterprise. They can dramatically increase sales, improve productivity, boost morale and much more. If you disagree with me or doubt this, go ahead and read the previous article in this series (but come back).

Igniting knowledge sharing in the enterprise

Igniting knowledge sharing and turning it to a full blown fire is possible by …

having the company “advertise” on corporate blogs. Here is a short recipe:

Management should prepare a list of topics that are important for company (the company will see real benefits if employees share their knowledge of and collaborate on these topics).

Management should then define how much it is willing to pay for blogging on the subject, in the same way that advertising is done in the Internet today–by determining how many dollars they are willing to pay for a thousand page views of an article on the subject.

It should than expose this new incentive model to the employees and . . .

step back.

For example:

If the company wants employees to share sales knowledge and insights, it can define a price tag of $75 for a thousand views of an article about sales. This will result in employees’ writing articles about sales and making sure that everyone reads them. Presto: You have knowledge sharing in the sales department.

Why use the Internet’s advertising model on internal blogs?

Because it gives a employees a powerful financial incentive to do the following:

Work hard on spreading their knowledge (marketing their blogs): It’s a simple equation: the more people read the employee’s tips, ideas, and insights, the more money he or she gets. Employees will send e-mails to their co-workers, talk about their blog at lunch, and beg other company bloggers to link to them.
Write about the most useful/interesting stuff they know: Writing an article about drinking coffee is boring and no one will read it–there’s no payday. Writing a tip that can help you triple your sales is extremely interesting. Everyone will read it! In fact, it will go viral. Some of the employees will send e-mails about it to their friends, effectively doing the marketing for the blogger. In advertising, that’s a gold mine.

Ignoring the Internet advertising model and paying employee bloggers an extra $1,000 a month will turn every employee into a blogger–but will turn none of them into an effective blogger.

A must-read tip about paying corporate bloggers

The company has to be generous! Especially at the beginning. The first bloggers are the company’s blogging poster girls/boys. They will spread the idea of knowledge sharing and collaboration throughout the company. If they are financially successful, others will quickly follow and knowledge sharing and collaboration will spread like wildfire.

Where to begin

Just do it! Setting up a blog and counting page views are extremely easy. Getting a small budget for the experiment is even easier. Paying only for page views on topics that are beneficial to the company is a bit more complex, but it can be done manually at first (I’ll discuss this in another article).

A friend of mine once told me, “Working with cutting-edge technologies and cutting-edge ideas means that sometimes, you get cut.” Your company should be aware that it might suffer some paper (blogging) cuts. But reaping the benefits of knowledge sharing and collaboration can supercharge even the largest company. Don’t delay!

This is the second installment in a series of articles about Enterprise 2.0.

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Knowledge Socialism: The Personal Risk and the Organizational Bonanza of Enterprise 2.0

In this article I will describe a problem that may be the biggest barrier to the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 applications among companies. I will try to offer a solution.

The two things every rich businessman knows

My boss, a very experienced and savvy businessman, once asked me a question:

“Do you know what are the two most important things every rich businessman knows?”

After confessing that I didn’t know, he said, “The first thing is, if you know of a way to make money, keep it to yourself!”

“And what is the second thing?” I asked eagerly.

At that he just smiled!

It took me a couple of minutes to understand that he had just pulled one over my head. By not answering the second question (and by his being much wealthier than I) he had demonstrated the importance of keeping one’s knowledge to oneself.

How to keep your knowledge to yourself and become rich and famous

Imagine that you are a salesperson and that you have just found a secret benefit of your company’s product. It is such a huge benefit that customers can’t open their wallet fast enough when they hear about it. It has tripled your sales in the last month. But the best thing about this benefit is this: None of your fellow salespeople know about it.

What would you do?

Schedule a meeting and tell everyone about it, or
Keep it to yourself

Telling everyone about it might make you the company hero for a month; you might even get a bonus.

Keeping it to yourself will

Make you the leading sales person
Triple your salary
Make you a prime candidate for the position of sales manager

The average corporate employee will undoubtedly keep this “tip” a secret. This is the peak of knowledge capitalism. However . . .

Knowledge socialism (Enterprise 2.0): the most profitable thing your company can do

The flip side is that the best thing for your company is that you tell all the salespeople about the hidden benefit. It is ironic, but when it comes to knowledge, the best way to make a company profitable is to act like a socialist. It’s better for the company if everyone share their knowledge freely (within the company).

It is in the best interest of your company that you blog about the product benefit and/or open a Wiki page to explore the benefit and think of ways to incorporate it into the company’s marketing and sales effort. The sales of your company could triple!

And herein lays the rub. Sharing knowledge (Knowledge Socialism/Enterprise 2.0) is overwhelmingly important for the company and is very much against the employee’s personal financial interest.

How to align an employee’s gain with knowledge socialism

To successfully integrate knowledge socialism/Enterprise 2.0 into the enterprise, management must find a way to make it in the employee’s best (financial) interest to share his knowledge with the company. This might be very difficult. A “tip”, after all, can triple the employee’s salary and make him next in line for his boss’s position. A “tip” is worth a lot, but the company can’t afford (in more ways than one) to pay out huge bonuses to people with ideas. But . . .

Companies can create a reward structure for thinkers—a structure that benefits thinkers by paying them more, improving their position in the company and increasing their reputation both inside and outside the company.

The person or company that will fully understand how to do this will become immensely successful. Let’s hope they don’t keep this knowledge to themselves.

This is the first installment from a series of articles about the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 in organizations.

Discover Enterprise 2.0 Ideas and News

The Enterprise Irregulars are a group of smart people that discuss Office 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 ideas and news.

I read some of their blogs, but reading all of them was too much (they blog about other things beside enterprise 2.0 and the reading-load was beyond my capabilities).

Being the smart group that they are, they understood the problem and created a central blog to aggregate their Enterprise 2.0 related posts.

I subscribed to the feed and if you want to discover cool Web 2.0 ideas and breaking Enterprise 2.0 news, I suggest you do the same.

Social Software in the Enterprise

Niall Cook just started writing a book about social software in the enterprise. He also set up a blog to document the process. This has the potential of becoming a very inetersting read for office/corporate productivity addicts (I will be following it).

Beside writing about an interesting topic, Niall made a very smart move by using social software (Blog, Wiki, Bookmarking) to write a book about…Social software. Come to think of it, this is a smart move for every aspiring author. Two thumbs up Niall, and good luck.